Earlier this summer, my mom and I went to England for 6 days. This was the first time I had ever planned a trip, and required a lot more work that I thought it would. For longer trips, I definitely encourage being more relaxed and extemporaneous with a little bit of planning. However, since we didn’t have that much time, I decided to tone down on the spontaneity. Of course, not everything went exactly as planned, but we did see everything we wanted to.
These are the five main steps I took to plan my trip:
- I bought a Rick Steves’ guide to England. I read all the advice and skimmed to see which landmarks I would be interested in visiting.
- I started to keep a running list of things I definitely wanted to see and things that I would like to check out if time permits. Since I knew I wanted to spend most of my time in London, I planned for 4 days in London and 2 day trips to other nearby cities. Based on my interests and how much time we had, we ended up going to Cambridge and Bath.
- As for our time in London, I split up the days based on location- north, west, south, and east.
- Instead of wasting time pouring over maps there, I familiarized myself with the London Underground ahead of time– making sure I knew exactly which lines to take, which stops to switch at, and where to get off.
- Since I knew day trips would be much more exhausting, I planned the day trips to be sandwiched between days in London, and then I bought train tickets for those specific days
Hopefully these steps were useful and will help you when you plan your next trip!
